Grigorii Sinicin

BAIC Group (officially Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese state-owned enterprise and holding company of several automobile and machine manufacturers located in Beijing, China, founded in 1958.

Its principal subsidiaries include the passenger car maker Beijing Motor; military vehicle and light truck maker BAW; and truck, bus, and agricultural equipment maker, Foton Motor. BAIC also makes Hyundai and Mercedes-branded cars for sale on the Chinese market through the Beijing Hyundai and Beijing Benz joint ventures (of BAIC Motor).

It is often ranked as the fifth or fourth-largest Chinese automaker by volume and boasts several successful passenger-car joint ventures with foreign firms. However, unlike peers such as SAIC Motor, a significant proportion of BAIC's output is agricultural, commercial, and military vehicles.

BAIC was originally founded in 1958 as Beijing Automobile Works (BAW), which found success producing the Dongfanghong BJ760, a vehicle based on the Soviet GAZ-21.

BAIC was one of the top ten most-productive Chinese automakers in 2010. This may be due to subsidiary Beijing Automobile Works and a sustained surge of popularity for Beijing Hyundai products. It reached fifth place by selling nearly 1.5 millions units garnering a market share of more than 8%. 2011 production of 1.5 million whole vehicles made BAIC the fifth largest vehicle-maker in China that year in terms of units manufactured. BAIC remained fifth in 2012, which saw the company make 1.7 million whole vehicles; 30% of production was commercial or heavy-duty products.

BAIC has a wide product line that includes more than the buses that are its traditional manufacture. Offerings encompass many kinds of commercial vehicles, including: agricultural machinery, construction machinery, light trucks, and military vehicles, etc. As of 2010, commercial vehicle production capacity is estimated to be around 700,000 units per year. Production capacity figures may consider engines and vehicles as discrete.

The company sells self-branded consumer products in addition to joint-venture developed vehicles under the brands of foreign manufacturers Hyundai Motor Company and the Mercedes-Benz Group. BAIC-branded military and civilian light trucks have also been produced.

Albert Hofmann, (born Jan. 11, 1906, Baden, Switz.—died April 29, 2008, Burg, Switz.), Swiss chemist who discovered the psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which he first synthesized in 1938 by isolating compounds found in ergot (Claviceps purpurea), a fungus affecting rye.

Despite his family’s lack of means, Hofmann spent an idyllic childhood exploring the hills surrounding Baden, though as a teenager he was forced to seek work when his father became ill. He attended the University of Zürich, graduating in 1929 with a doctorate in medicinal chemistry. Upon graduation he was hired by Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, where he was assigned to a program developing methods for synthesizing compounds found in medicinal plants. It was there, while testing the analeptic (stimulant) properties of ergot derivatives, that Hofmann stumbled upon LSD-25 (the 25th such derivative tested) in 1938.

Hofmann’s initial discovery was set aside for five years until April 1943, when he returned to his earlier therapeutic research on the compound. After accidentally absorbing a small amount of the synthesized drug, he experienced dreamlike hallucinations. Following his initial experience, Hoffman purposely ingested the drug numerous times, concluding that it could be of significant use in psychiatric treatment. He spent years investigating LSD’s hallucinogenic properties in the belief that the drug would one day be useful in the therapeutic treatment of schizophrenics and other psychiatric patients. While disapproving of the casual recreational use that came to define the drug in the 1960s, Hofmann maintained that the drug, when taken under controlled circumstances and with full knowledge of the possible effects, could prove useful in both psychiatric and spiritual contexts, an argument that he conveyed in his 1979 book LSD, mein Sorgenkind (LSD: My Problem Child, 1980).

Hofmann also isolated methergine, a drug used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, from ergot. However, most of his later research focused on the psychotropic qualities of various plants and fungi. In 1958 he synthesized psilocybin and psilocin, the hallucinogenic compounds in the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana, having been sent samples by an amateur mycologist intrigued by his work with LSD. In 1960 he discovered a compound similar to LSD in a species of morning glory (Rivea corymbosa), and in 1962 he traveled to Mexico to research the plant Salvia divinorum, though he was ultimately unable to discern its actively hallucinogenic components. While in Mexico, he was able to convince a curandera (female shaman) to preside over a ritual that employed the compounds he had isolated from the Psilocybe mushrooms, which grew naturally in the area. Hofmann also investigated the pharmacological properties of a number of other plants as well, including peyote, from which mescaline is derived.

Hofmann, who had become director of natural products at Sandoz Laboratories in 1956, retired in 1971. In 1988 the Albert Hofmann Foundation, an organization advocating the responsible use of hallucinogens, was established in his honour. He contributed to several books, including The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), which speculates that the Eleusinian Mysteries, a series of ancient Greek religious rites, were catalyzed by consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms; The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (1973); and Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use (1979). Hofmann independently wrote Insight/Outlook (1989), concerning the perception of reality, and the posthumously published Hofmann’s Elixir: LSD and the New Eleusis (2008).